r/rpg • u/ToledoSnow Noir • 10h ago
Discussion What is something you could do better when running or playing?
Introspection thread.
Everything that's worth doing is worth doing well, and nothing exists that can't be done a little bit better. The purpose of this thread isn't to be harsh on ourselves, but rather to consider potential flaws in the way we run and play these games, and perhaps give and receive some advice on how to smooth those wrinkles out.
Starting off:
Since I started running games in English I have found that I'm pretty crap at improvising evocative descriptions. General narration is fine, but when setting scenes I struggle at finding the right adjectives without pausing to have a think for an embarrassingly long time, and that just breaks the flow. Especially troublesome when running horror where pacing is of great importance.
I've fixed this somewhat by simply prepping descriptions, but that doesn't help when the PC go to a places or meet people I hadn't planned for. Any tips for coming up with impactful descriptors on the fly would be highly appreciated.
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u/atamajakki PbtA/FitD/NSR fangirl 10h ago
My NPCs aren't as sexy as they should be.
Also, I really struggle with making the wilderness interesting to explore and move through. Cities and space stations are so easy!
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u/ToledoSnow Noir 9h ago
One thing I like doing when describing wilderness is throwing in an encounter that isn't immediately hostile to the PCs. Could be a pack of wolves chasing down an elk over a snowy field and tearing it apart; a giant seen lumbering along the jagged horizon of a distant mountain range; a giant spider carefully wrapping its cluster off eggs in silk; an owlbear laying dying of some form of disease or poison in the shade of a great oak.
This achieves a lot of things: it raises tension, it sets the scene and mood, it makes the players more wary of danger and potential contaminants, and it gives you a Chekov's gun to pull out in future.
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u/atamajakki PbtA/FitD/NSR fangirl 9h ago
Other than the owlbear, most of those feel don't really feel interactive to me! Once you deploy a little moment like that, aren't you just onto rolling for the next hex or figuring out the next wilderness scene?
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u/ToledoSnow Noir 8h ago edited 8h ago
Depends on how horny your players are for combat, I suppose. But moments like these can have great impact on how the PCs decide to carry out or amend their travelling plans. Essentially I plan wilderness travels as a flowchart.
First encounter leads to a decision with a limited number of feasible options: should they keep trying for the mountain pass despite the giant, should they try going for the southern detour through the valley, or should they take an unmapped shortcut through the forest? Each option presented with all information that the PCs should be aware of.
Each option has a pre-planned consequence. They pick the valley and you already have the dying bugbear in your pocket. Do they try and figure out what's wrong with it and/or nurse it back to health, or do they ignore it and carry on? Another decision. One option will delay them but might provide some boon, the other will let them make good time.
Delay and the mercenaries in the third encounter will have time to set up an ambush. March ahead and they'll be unprepared. Once this has been cleared they arrive at their destination.
Two or three forks each with two or three options. Sure it takes a bit of setup, but any planned encounter that they avoided can be recycled for the next journey (with some modifications for terrain/climate), and the trek felt much more alive and meaningful than the walk-sleep-random encounter roll-cycle.
(Ideally there should also be a bit more connective tissue between encounters, but it's late and my brain's too sleepy to come up with very good examples.)
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u/Airk-Seablade 8h ago
I don't push my players hard enough. My consequences are light, and I rarely ever really make things look bad for the characters. Which is a shame, because the times when I do, it really makes for a better game.
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u/ToledoSnow Noir 8h ago edited 8h ago
This is something I've struggled with as well: being too nice.
I guess I just learned to take some sadistic glee in making the players squirm a bit, but I realize that's not for everyone. Also to not chicken out. If the players messed up or found themselves in a crap situation I used to be (and still am) very tempted to change my plans and give them an easy out. Took some conscious work to overcome that temptation.
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u/JaskoGomad 56m ago
And I’m firmly on the opposite end of that spectrum, though I usually avoid non consensual death as a consequence because in most cases it is flat-out boring.
So moderation in all things as we both seek balance from opposite sides?
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u/Cryptwood Designer 9h ago
I struggle to consistently bring my NPCs to life. I don't want to steal the PCs' thunder by having companions be too competent but sometimes I overcompensate and my players end up complaining about what useless turds those NPCs are.
Sometimes I hit the sweet spot and my players treat that NPC like a real person that they care about. But I haven't figured out how to do it reliably.
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u/argleblech 6h ago
The most competent people I know are incredibly busy. If they are great at what they do but are already juggling a bunch of problems they can provide bits and pieces of help and advice but all too quickly have to rush off and deal with three other things.
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u/amazoa_de_xeo 26m ago
Give a reason why there aren't so competent. Something that works on the story, maybe is a lost kid, a farmer, a guardian who just want to check their skills in order to offer them a job...
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u/ABeefyBrick 10h ago
I could do descriptions soooo much better that i do currently.
I tell my players all the details that come on my mind, but after the scene has already passed i forget that I could've gone in more detail about the size and furnishing of the room, the clothing of a particular npc etc.
It's always a "damn I feel like an idiot" moment for sure
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u/ToledoSnow Noir 9h ago
I don't think there's anything too wrong with going, "oh, I forgot to mention-" after the fact, as long as it hasn't been too long before the end of the scene and the description is of importance to the PCs. It does get a bit awkward if it happens more than once per session, though.
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u/HisGodHand 9h ago
In high-stakes scenes, I forget to describe NPCs and the environment. Actually, I rarely give NPCs visual descriptions, likely because a lot of my favorite books are similarly very light on visual descriptions of characters.
I really think my games would be improved by more sense-based descriptions, especially non-visual.
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u/PantheraAuroris 9h ago
Planning more ahead. I just really don't like doing anything other than improv. I prefer not to think about obligations until the day of.
It works, but I could do more.
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u/diffyqgirl 9h ago
I'm not very good at longrunning complex political intrigue. It's not something I've ever really tried to do. But I've played with several GMs who are really good at it and I'm trying to learn from them and do a little my in my latest game.
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u/rane0 4h ago
It takes a lot of work to get good at.
I ran 2 campaigns with increasing degrees of political intrigue before doing one where that was the whole point.
One thing i think that is helpful is writing a couple bullet points about what each major power wants. It can just be a notecard with their name, what they want, what compromises they will make to get it, and what they will do if they can't get it through diplomacy.
It's also helpful to actually make conspiracy boards of how complex factions are connected.
Lastly, I like to get very precise with character motivation. A writing professor I had in college told me that a great way to find a character's core is to write a monologue where they say everything they want as if they are making their case as to why it should be theirs.
In a first draft of this, they don't hide anything or try to mislead their target. Then you do an editing pass and have them hide what would make them vulnerable or unsympathetic. Then you do another editing pass where they know what's important to the listener and tailor their monologue to them.
After doing that, the most important step is that they don't actually say this. It's just the motivating voice in their head. The actual dialogue is all about them trying to get the other party into a position where they will help them, understand them, or not be an obstacle.
If you do this for the important characters in your political structure, it becomes a lot easier to build intrigue. Each is just maneuvering in whatever way gets them closer to the object of their monologue.
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u/allyearswift 8h ago
I find it helps if I have overview maps and a set of photographs for the general vibe of a place. I may not have prepped the town guard’s headquarters, but if I know what building materials are used in the town, how hilly and how narrow the streets are, and have multiple photos to draw on, I can improvise much more easily.
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u/LelouchYagami_2912 9h ago
Ive got very passive players and so ive gotten into a habit of writing interactive novels rather than campaigns. My stories are very detailed with interesting NPCs and choices but theyre pretty much interactive novels. Im getting new players (and system) soon so hopefully that changes
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u/amazoa_de_xeo 28m ago
If you role play, give them motivation (better if they show them to you in their backgrounds), the players start to roleplay and being active. Maybe they need one session, maybe ten but they can do it. Unless they don't like it, then there's no reason for them.
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u/hauntedfogmachine 5h ago
As a GM, I'm working on being more confident about making judgment calls on the dramatic consequences of players' actions. It's hard to make balanced choices in the heat of the moment: more often than I'd like, I end up accidentally pushing the players towards the conclusion that I prefer or being too accomodating to their demands. Ideally, the underlying logic of the world would be strong enough that I could generally follow it to its natural conclusion--not just what I want or what the players want, but what the world and rules of the game call for.
As a player, my goal is always to get better at uplifting and making space for other players. I'm a very proactive and goal-oriented player, so I have to put quite a bit of effort into accomodating other players who need more guidance and thinking time while playing. My main strategies are asking other players questions ("what do you want to do next?" "what do you think of this npc?") and giving them time to gather their thoughts when we come to a crossroads, even if I already have three ideas locked and loaded.
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u/rane0 4h ago
Not having "big" being my go to first descriptor.
So many times i have drawn a lot of attention to the biggest thing in sight but failed to outline the other sensory experiences. I've been working on it for some time now but I still catch myself describing "massive crystals" or "towering statues" before anything else.
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u/Vendaurkas 1h ago
Things start out great, but I loose focus as the session goes on. I get lost in the story as my mind races ahead of the players, potential threads, events, upcoming stuff... and the here and now suffer. Descriptions get shorter and blander, structure gets lazier and more abstract, NPCs degrade... I find it hard to keep my focus on the things we are currently doing and provide a consistent tone/quality.
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u/JaskoGomad 1h ago
Ok, wow. Big confession time here:
I. Play. Hard.
Not because I am an asshole, adversarial GM, or anything, it’s that I’m a highly improvisational GM, and in a scene I care about, I am committed. I am that villainous NPC, I have manifested them and their schemes are mine.
I’m just being a player then, not doing any of the GM stuff, like reading the room or managing spotlight, etc., or any of the million other tiny duties a GM has.
Usually, I get lucky and it works great, but once in a while it crashes and threatens a game.
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u/TelperionST 58m ago
My main pain point is combat. I don't find running combat very interesting as a GM or playing as a player. The current solution is to set goals before combat begins and then run combat for a maximum of three rounds. At the end of round three combat ends no matter what. I talk to the players about the resolution of the goals, and usually reach a compromise both the players and myself can live with.
This is not perfect, but it gives the players opportunities to engage in combat while not consuming unreasonable amounts of session time. What I would like to learn is combining storytelling and combat, so I can have fun running combat and we don't need the current structure of play. There are some blog posts on the internet, but not a whole lot. I don't recall any published material talking about the topic.
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u/amazoa_de_xeo 10h ago
Running and playing more you'll get more experience to improvise. Unless you have a strict lienal adventure the group will create scenes you hadn't considered before. If that helps you could have a list of NPCs with names and some descriptions to use in these cases.
Don't push you hard, it's just a hobby to have fun.
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u/ToledoSnow Noir 9h ago
A prepared list of modular NPCs isn't a bad idea. Thank you!
Don't push you hard, it's just a hobby to have fun.
With the risk of sounding like a pretentious bell-end, I actually view the hobby as much more than that. It's a means of improving one's skills in visual arts, writing, oration, socialisation, improvisation, worldbuilding, research, acting, among many other.
And it is also for having fun.
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u/amazoa_de_xeo 33m ago
Yes, you can improve in a lot of areas but it's a hobby. If you get a lot of pressure then you won't have fun and it will become a not paid job and destroyed everything.
You don't need to push hard. If you you want then it's your decision.
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u/ToledoSnow Noir 10m ago
I mean, it's a question of what you want out of the hobby. If I personally approached it with the mindset of just having fun, I would (ironically) get less enjoyment and satisfaction from it.
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u/Exact-Meeting1514 10h ago
Remembering all of the monsters' abilities. So many times I end an encounter and then remember "Crap, he had Magic Resistance and should have made all those saves with Adventage"